Read Online The Best of Times by Penny Vincenzi - Free Book Online Page B

was worth calling her.So … can we go, please? I mean, will you take me? I’d be grateful for the rest of my life …”
    • • •
    He had to finish it: absolutely had to. For the sake of a few dizzy days and nights of novelty, the absolute adrenaline rush of danger, he was at serious risk of losing everything he had.
    He looked across at her as they drove along, this raw, sexy, not even very beautiful young thing, only twelve years older, dear God, than his son, and saw his life, its perfect edifice, being rocked to its foundations.
    It wasn’t even as if there was anything wrong with his marriage. It was perfect; Laura was the perfect wife, caring, loving, beautiful … Everyone told him so, told him how lucky he was, and he was. It was just that … well, it was all a bit predictable. Their conversations, their social lives, their family lives, their sex lives. Especially their sex lives. He supposed that was what had actually led him into this heady, dangerous situation … Laura knew sex was important, she wanted to please him, she claimed he pleased her, she never refused him; but she never initiated it, never suggested anything, never wanted it moved out of the bedroom … He felt every time that she had ticked the experience off, seen yet another duty done. Which had been the charm of Abi, of course; with her demands, her inventiveness, her risk taking. Sex was at the centre of her.
    And what kind of bastard set those things before love, before loyalty, before family happiness …?
    His sort of bastard, it seemed …
    Initially he had tried to excuse himself, to tell himself it was only a one-night stand, or at the very most, the briefest fling, purely sex, that it would revitalise his marriage, make him more aware of the treasure he possessed.
    But Abi was more than a fling; he felt increasingly addicted to her. She seemed to be completely amoral: she had lost count, she once toldhim, of how many men she had slept with; she drank too much; she did a lot of drugs. She was the sort of woman indeed that he despised and disliked, and what he was doing with her, he had no real idea—except that he was having fantastic sex with her. And finding a huge and dangerous excitement in his life.
    He had met her only two months before, when he had been (genuinely) at a medical conference. The conference organiser, one of the big pharmaceutical companies, had wanted some photographs taken of the speakers and people at the dinner; the photographer had been an annoying little chap with a nasal whine, but his assistant, following him round with a notebook to record the names of subjects, and a second camera, had been … well, she had been amazing. She was dark, tall, and very skinny, with incredible legs. Her long hair was pulled back in a half-undone ponytail; her black silky dress was extremely short and, although quite high necked, clung to a braless bosom. Jonathan could see it was braless because her nipples stood out so clearly. She wore very high-heeled black boots with silver heels, very large silver earrings, and quite a lot of makeup, particularly on her eyes, which were huge and dark, and her lips, which were full and sensual.
    As she bent down to speak to Jonathan to ask his name, her perfume, rich and raw, surrounded him, confusing him.
    “Sorry about this,” she said, “but it’s my job. Do you mind telling me how you spell Gilliatt?”
    He spelt it for her, smiling. “Don’t apologise. You make a nice change from all the other obstetricians.”
    “Good.” She smiled at him, stood up, and walked away.
    He sat and stared after her, suddenly unable to think about anything else. She walked … How did she walk? Rhythmically, leaning back just a little, her hips thrust forward; it was a master class (or mistress class? he wondered rather wildly) in visual temptation.
    As dessert was served, he saw her working a table in the far corner of the room. He excused himself from the male midwife beside him (now waxing